


Proper Romeo and Juliet

by VeryImportantDemon



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, River's diary, Romeo and Juliet References, The Doctor loves her wife very much, Very Secret Diary, Yas finds River's diary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 09:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17301923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeryImportantDemon/pseuds/VeryImportantDemon
Summary: Yas finds River Song's diary.





	Proper Romeo and Juliet

It was quiet. For most on a Sunday that wouldn’t be unusual, but it was for Yaz. The TARDIS was never quiet. The Doctor, an enigmatic curiosity, was never quiet. But the air was still so Yaz went looking for something to do. The TARDIS was perfect for wandering - it basically demanded to be explored - so Yaz went wandering. 

 

She wandered past a swimming pool, a locked door with something growling behind it, and what looked like a massive junkyard of spare parts. However, the room that really caught her attention was a library. From floor to ceiling were books upon books of different shapes and sizes and colors. The ceiling was high but the shelves reached all the way to the top. There were so many books stuffed on the shelves that they didn’t all fit and were piled up about the floor. Of all the magnificent tomes, Yaz was drawn to one specific book perched on top of a leaning tower. It was a small blue notebook shaped like the TARDIS.

 

The entire thing was handwritten and it felt like a secret. It was someone’s doing, someone who knew the Doctor very well. They wrote on and on about adventures and dates and dangers and a wedding and love. Whoever had written this diary loved the Doctor so much that Yaz could feel it through the pages and it made her heart ache. The final entry talked about a place called Darillium and how they knew they’d never see the Doctor again. She could feel the author’s sadness through the pages, so much so that she found herself wiping away a tear. 

 

A voice startled Yaz out of her musings - the Doctor’s voice. “Yaz!” she called. “Yaz, I found a really cool island on this planet I want us to check out! I’ve already got Graham and Ryan in the control room…” Yaz quickly wiped her eyes once more with the back of her hand as the Doctor appeared in the doorway. “Oh, there you are!” she said. “I see you found the library.” Her eyes travelled downward quickly as she noticed the book still in Yaz’s hands. “I see you found something to read.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Yaz blurted. “I found it in here and I just started reading it and I’m-” She stopped to catch her breath but the Doctor’s expression kept her from speaking again. She was smiling but she looked sad, too. 

 

“It’s alright,” she said. “If I really didn’t want you lot reading it I would’ve hid it away better. And she clearly wanted you to find it.”

 

“She?” Yaz asked, frowning.

 

The Doctor hummed softly, brushing her fingers against the doorway. “My TARDIS. She’s a she and she has a mind of her own.” Yaz was silent, processing this new information. So the Doctor’s spaceship was a she and she was sentient. Yaz wasn’t too surprised, to tell the truth, but it was something new. She turned the diary over in her hands, debating her next words. 

 

“Who was she?” Yaz asked. “The woman from the book. She talked like she knew you very well. She said… She said you got married.” The Doctor was quiet for a long time, fiddling with the ends of her coat. 

 

“River Song,” she said softly. “Her name was River Song and I love her very much. She wrote that book for me, you know.” 

 

“For you?” Yaz asked, confused. “Why would she write a diary for you?”

 

“Our timelines were all backwards,” the Doctor said. “We had to keep diaries so we wouldn’t spoil the future.” She smiled sadly again. “Could I…” She didn’t have to finish before Yaz held it out for her. The Doctor sighed, running her fingertips over the leather cover. After a beat, Yaz spoke again. 

 

“What do you mean your timelines are backwards?” she asked. The Doctor hummed softly. 

 

“Oh, yes. I forget not everyone speaks time travel, you know. Come here.” She lead Yaz to a table partially covered in books and rips a blank page out of one of them. She flattened it out on the table before pulling a multi-colored pen from her coat. “Our lives are like this,” she said, drawing a curving wave. “That line’s me.” She clicked the pen and, in red this time, drew another curving line. “This one is River.” The lines resembled a double-helix. “My line is going north to south and hers is going south to north. Opposites. But we meet sometimes, at these points.” The Doctor tapped the pen on one of the intersections. “That’s a simplified version. In reality it was a lot more… Timey whimey.”

 

She fell silent, noticing Yaz’s eyes on her. “What?” she asked.

 

“That’s… That’s sad,” Yaz said finally, struggling to find the words. “Like a proper Romeo and Juliet.” 

 

The Doctor smiled, hugging the diary to her chest. “The original star-crossed lovers, crossing the actual stars.” Yaz couldn’t help but smile faintly at that, too.

 

“Do you miss her?” she asked. The Doctor didn’t hesitate for a moment before she spoke. 

 

“Of course. Every day.”

 

“But you don’t seem sad,” Yaz commented. “You seem happy all the time. Excited.”

 

“That’s cause I am,” she said with a laugh. “I am mostly. I can be both. She made me promise one day to no lose myself when she was gone because she knew she was going, too. She made me promise to keep travelling and to find people who made me happy so I wouldn’t be alone.”

 

“Do we make you happy?” Yaz asked, her mouth oddly dry. 

 

“Of course,” the Doctor said. “You lot make me very happy.”

 

Suppressing a smile, Yaz spoke again. “You’ve seen so much. How do you not forget her?” She faltered before voicing her next question. “You… You loved her so much. How are you not sad?”

 

“Simple,” the Doctor said. “I can’t forget River Song. She was… She was the great love of my life. She was smart and beautiful and witty and… Well, I can’t forget her because I see her in most everything. And I do get sad sometimes. I miss her very much. But I see pretty things that remind me of her and I have good memories and I remember how lucky I am that I got to have her as long as I did when the chances of me getting that lucky were nearly nonexistent. One thing travelling like I do teaches you is impermanence. Nothing lasts forever so you take advantage of what you have when you have it.” She paused, thinking for a beat. “I suppose we are a proper Romeo and Juliet,” she said with a laugh. “We both die at the end. But I’m not at the end. I’ve still got quite a life left to lead.” The Doctor held her hand out to Yaz, the book under her other arm. “Want to come?”

 

Yaz took it without hesitation. 


End file.
